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Food-security governance in India and Ethiopia: A comparative analysis
Ivica Petrikova, Royal Holloway, University of London
Abstract
Despite recently legislating the right of all citizens to food security, India continues to suffer
high food-insecurity rates. With respect to several measures, food insecurity in India appears
to be actually higher than in Ethiopia, a country with only one fourth of India’s average per-
capita income. This article examines comparatively the two countries’ food-security
challenges and governance mechanisms and identifies several relevant policy areas for mutual
learning – dietary diversity, maternal and infant nutrition, and sanitation as well as food
production and programmes’ external oversight. Beyond India and Ethiopia, these findings are
pertinent also to other developing countries facing similar food-security challenges such as
Pakistan, Nigeria or Sudan.
Key words: food security; India; Ethiopia; Public Distribution System (PDS); Productive Safety
Net Programme (PSNP); nutrition
Introduction
In 2013, Indian parliament passed the National Food Security Act (NFSA), which
proclaimed to guarantee Indian citizens a justiciable right to food. Nevertheless, despite this
formal acknowledgment of citizens’ inalienable right to food and the country’s recent rapid
economic growth, a large proportion of Indians is still food insecure. For example, 36%
Indian children younger than five years are underweight.1 The comparative rate in Ethiopia, a
country with similar food-security challenges but only one-fourth of India’s average per-
capita income, is significantly lower, at 24%.2 India’s inordinately high food-insecurity level
relative to the country’s income has been dubbed by some the ‘South Asian enigma’.3 By
comparing the food-security situation and governance in India and Ethiopia, with a particular
focus on food access and utilisation, this article contributes to research on the enigma’s
causes and remedies specifically and on food-security governance more broadly. It identifies
opportunities for the two countries’ mutual learning particularly in the areas of dietary
diversity, maternal and infant nutrition, and sanitation. Whilst derived from the Indian and
Ethiopian contexts, these lessons may be relevant also for other food-insecure countries in the
Global South facing similar challenges such as Pakistan, Nigeria, and Sudan.
The article’s next sections define ‘food security’, describe its state in India and
Ethiopia, review the two countries’ key food-security policies and programmes, and finally
1
reflect on suitable cross-country lessons. The analysis draws on information from national
surveys (e.g. India’s National Family Health Survey [NFHS], Ethiopia’s Demographic and
Health Survey [DHS]) and international databases (e.g. Food and Agriculture Organisation
[FAO], World Development Indicators [WDI]), secondary sources including academic
literature and policy reports, and semi-structured interviews conducted in India and Ethiopia
with government officials and NGO workers between April and June 2017.
What is food security?
FAO defines food security as a state ‘when all people, at all times, have physical,
social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary
needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’.4 Food security stands on four
pillars: food availability, access to food, food utilisation, and stability over time.
Food availability, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), denotes the
amount of food present in a country/area through domestic production, imports, food stocks,
and food aid.5 The term normally refers to the national or regional rather than household
level.6 Access to food, in contrast, refers to households’ and individuals’ ability to obtain
sufficient food through legal and conventional means, which include producing, buying, and
receiving donations but exclude stealing and begging.7 Food utilisation relates to the body’s
physical process of digesting food and utilising it in further functioning. Its fulfilment is
affected by both the type of food consumed and health of the body consuming it and thus can
be jeopardised by a lack of vital micronutrients, unhygienic conditions or poor health.
Finally, stability or reasonable future certainty about having access to enough food in the
future needs to be fulfilled as well to ensure lasting food security.8
This article focuses on food-access and food-utilisation aspects of food security,
which are most closely connected with household and individual food-security outcomes
underlying the South Asian enigma. Food availability and stability, more related to national
and regional food-security measures, are discussed only vis-à-vis their effects on household
and individual food security.
Food (in)security in India and Ethiopia
This section describes the socio-economic context of the two countries under study,
portrays their respective food-security situations with reference to the four food-security
pillars, and briefly discusses the South Asian enigma.
2
Establishing context
India and Ethiopia constitute a suitable comparative case-study pair given their
resemblance in several key economic and social indicators (Table 1). Even though India’s
GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power parity, is almost four-times higher than
Ethiopia’s, both countries experienced high economic growth in the past two decades. Their
levels of economic inequality, measured by the Gini index, are almost identical as well, just
below 34.
The two countries are also amongst the most populous on their respective continents.
India ranks second in total population in Asia (and the world) to China, with 1.3 billion
inhabitants. Ethiopia, with just over 100 million people, is surpassed in Africa only by
Nigeria and due to high population growth estimated to attain more than 200 million by
2050.9 Additionally, the majority of population in both countries is still rural (India 67%,
Ethiopia 80%) and employed in agriculture (India 51%, Ethiopia 73%).
There are also some important differences between the two countries pertinent to the
comparison of food-security issues and governance. India’s staple grains are primarily wheat
and rice, both internationally relatively widely-traded commodities, whilst Ethiopia’s include
less widely-traded teff, barley, millet, sorghum, and white maize. Regarding the countries’
political regime, India is considered the largest democracy in the world whereas Ethiopia has
been governed by a single party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPRDF), since 1991 in a highly authoritarian manner.10
Access to food and food utilisation
As food access and utilisation constitute this study’s main focus, I present India’s and
Ethiopia’s performance in them first. The most commonly-utilised measure of food access is
FAO’s ‘prevalence of undernourishment’, which expresses the probability that a randomly-
selected individual from a given country consumes fewer daily calories than necessary for an
active and healthy life.11 It is estimated using a combination of national food-availability and
economic-inequality data and has been accused of inaccuracy by numerous researchers.12
Nevertheless, before considering alternative indicators, let us look at its evolution in the two
countries under study. Figure 1 demonstrates that whilst between 2000 and 2015 the
prevalence of undernourishment in Ethiopia roughly halved, in India it remained more-or-less
the same. However, at 28.2% Ethiopia’s rate is still twice as high as India’s (14.5%).
3
Alternative measures of food access, which also capture the quality of food utilisation,
are undernourishment rates amongst children younger than five years available from the
World Health Organisation (WHO). These measures are widely acknowledged as the best
indicators of populations’ nutritional status as they are derived directly from national health
surveys and closely correlated with undernourishment rates across populations overall.13 They
include the prevalence of child stunting (too short for age), underweight (too light for age),
and wasting (too light for height).
In contrast with data on general undernourishment prevalence, which showed India
performing better than Ethiopia, child-undernourishment data (Figure 2) do the opposite.
India’s and Ethiopia’s stunting rates are almost identical (38.4% and 38%, respectively) but
‘only’ 24% of Ethiopian children are underweight and 9% wasted as opposed to India’s 36%
and 21%, respectively. Other relevant indicators, presented in Table 2, also point to
somewhat better food utilisation in Ethiopia, with lower prevalence of anaemia14 amongst
pregnant women (India 53.6%, Ethiopia 23%), lower prevalence of Vitamin A deficiency in
the population (India 62%, Ethiopia 51%), and lower rate of open defecation (India 46%,
Ethiopia 32%), which has been explicitly linked to better nourishment outcomes.15 Only
access to improved water sources is significantly higher amongst Indian (94%) than
Ethiopian (64%) households.
Food availability and stability
Food availability is commonly measured through average dietary energy supply
adequacy (ADESA), calculated by converting the country’s total food supply into calories
relative to the country’s population needs based on lifestyle.16 Figure 3 shows that whilst
India’s food availability has been more than adequate (>100%) since 1995, Ethiopia’s has
approached adequacy only in recent years. One reason why India’s food availability in the
last quarter century has been greater than Ethiopia’s is the higher level of India’s per-capita
food production. However, contributing to the rising ADESA, Ethiopia’s food production has
also experienced stable growth since mid-1990s (Figure 3). In line with these trends, India
has been a large net food exporter since 1995 whilst Ethiopia has maintained in this
timeframe a largely neutral food-trade balance. India’s food stock has, however, exhibited
more fluctuation than Ethiopia’s, with its per-capita food-supply variability, a measure of
food stability, more volatile than Ethiopia’s during the past two decades.
4
The various statistics presented show that although India’s food availability has been
clearly higher in the past quarter century than Ethiopia’s, the country’s national food
abundance has failed to translate into satisfactory food security for all.17 In fact, despite
significantly lower per-capita incomes and food availability, Ethiopian population appears
more food-secure than Indian population regarding several food-access and food-utilisation
measures. Is this a manifestation of the afore-mentioned South Asian enigma or merely of a
fundamental genetic difference between the two populations?
South Asian enigma?
The term ‘South Asian enigma’ was coined in 1997 in order to highlight that
significantly higher per-capita incomes in South Asian countries were associated with worse
food-security outcomes, particularly child undernourishment rates, than in sub-Saharan
Africa.18 However, some researchers countered that the higher South Asian undernourishment
rates were driven by genetic differences between people of South Asian and other ethnic
origins, pointing, for example, to findings that South Asians are at a higher risk of diabetes at
lower Body Mass Indices than other ethnic groups.19
The debate has not been settled to date; nevertheless, several pieces of evidence
suggest that India’s persistently high food insecurity has deeper causes than merely a genetic
one. First, studies have repeatedly shown affluent Indian children to follow statistically
indistinguishable growth patterns from well-nourished children elsewhere in the world, at
least until adolescence.20 Second, in the last two decades Bangladesh, whose population is
ethnically akin to the Indian one, has unlike India experienced a rapid reduction in child
undernourishment rates and food insecurity in general.21 Third, even if Indian child-
undernourishment figures were slightly inflated due to some innate genetic differences, India
has experienced a more sluggish rate of food-insecurity reduction than many African
countries, Ethiopia included.
Comparing Ethiopia’s food-security issues and governance with India’s can thus
likely shed light on some of the causes underlying India’s high food-insecurity prevalence
and potential remedies. Nonetheless, given Ethiopia’s own food-security challenges, useful
cross-country lessons can likely be drawn also in the other direction.
Food-security programmes in India and Ethiopia and their performance
This section reviews the two countries’ programmes and policies aimed at addressing
household and individual food-security outcomes and evaluates their relative performance.
5
6
Main Indian food-security programmes
India’s chief national food-security programme is the Public Distribution System
(PDS). It is supported mainly by the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the
Mid-Day Meal Scheme (MDMS).
PDS was established in India after World War Two, with the explicit aim to boost
domestic agricultural production and bolster food security. Originally a universal government
subsidy scheme for cereals, purchased from domestic farmers at guaranteed prices, in 1997
under pressure from the World Bank it was turned into a targeted pro-poor subsidy
mechanism.22 Afterwards, it granted only people certified to live below the poverty line
(BPL) the opportunity to purchase subsidised cereals, mostly wheat and rice (10 kg per
household per month). An additional scheme, the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY), enabled
the 25 million poorest people in India to purchase up to 35 kg23 of subsidised grains per
month. Individual Indian states were, however, permitted to make their PDS schemes more
inclusive at their own cost, which resulted in more comprehensive programmes operating in
states such as Chattisgarh, Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu.24 In 2013, the NFSA
expanded the theoretical PDS coverage to the poorest 75% rural and 50% urban citizens and
allowed eligible households to buy up to 5 kg of cereals per person per month at even lower
prices than before (rice 3 Indian rupees [IRS]/kg, wheat 2 IRS/kg, coarse grains 1 IRS/kg).25
By the end of 2016, all Indian states had formally begun implementing the NFSA.26
ICDS, established in 1975, aims to supplement PDS in improving children’s food
security by encouraging correct nutritional, feeding, hygiene, and health practices.27
Interventions within the scheme include the provision of supplementary nutrition and basic
health services to children under six years old and to pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, of
nutritional and health education to mothers, and of growth-monitoring, de-worming, and pre-
school education to children. These services are delivered through a network of anganwadi
centres (AWCs), staffed by government workers either providing help directly (e.g. pre-
school education, nutritional supplementation) or liaising with other health workers (e.g.
immunisations, health checks). The NFSA entrusted ICDS to provide pregnant women with
maternity grants of 6,000 IRS.28
MDMS, implemented in all Indian states from 2001, is also intended to promote child
nutrition, specifically through primary schools.29 As specified by the NFSA, all students in
public primary schools up to the age of 14 are entitled to receive a cooked lunch (450 kCal
and 12 grams of protein lower primary, 700 kCal and 20 grams of protein upper primary).30
7
Main Ethiopian food-security programmes
Ethiopia’s key national food-security scheme is the Productive Safety Net Programme
(PSNP). It was established by the Ethiopian Government and a donors’ consortium led by the
World Bank after the drought of 2002/2003. Motivation for the programme came from the
Ethiopian government’s desire to break the cycle of Ethiopia’s emergency appeals for food
aid, which saved people’s lives but often led to asset loss. The original PSNP provided food
and/or cash transfers to food-insecure households in chronically food-insecure woredas
(districts), identified based on food-aid receipts in the past, in return for participation in
public works. It was complemented by the Other Food Security Programme (OFSP), which
provided productive-asset packages to households and invested in socio-economic
infrastructure.31
In PSNP’s third round (2010-2015), the programme’s coverage was extended and
improvements were made to the timely delivery of transfers and the quality of the public
works implemented. OFSP was renamed the Household Asset Building Programme (HABP)
and expanded to help households acquire assets through the provision of technical assistance,
credit, and help with business planning. Following impact evaluations by the International
Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the fourth phase of PSNP, currently underway (2015-
2020), further enlarged the programme’s scope.
It currently covers seven out of nine Ethiopia’s regions, benefitting up to ten million
rural and one million urban Ethiopians.32 Participant households with economically active
members are entitled to 15 kg of cereals and 4 kg of pulses or their cash-equivalent (cash
disbursement is preferred by the government and gradually increasing) per person per month
for six months a year. In return, active household members must contribute up to five days of
public work per month. The public works generally focus on community development, such
as soil and water conservation, rangeland management, and construction of community assets
including roads, irrigation canals, and schools.33 Household members unable to work
(children, elderly, disabled, pregnant and breast-feeding mothers) receive PSNP food/cash
support all year without contributing to the public works. The programme in its current
format has also incorporated the HABP and thus offers technical assistance (e.g. agricultural
extension to farmers), training in livelihood activities, and credit to enable households to
increase and diversify their sources of income and acquire assets. Additionally, PSNP IV
contains a strengthened nutritional element, which provides nutritional education to
participants as part of the public works.
8
Similar to India, since 2005 Ethiopia has also operated a school-feeding programme
that provides hot lunch to primary-school students, specified to contain 150 grams of food
prepared from grains or beans.34
Comparing food-access and food-utilisation governance
A detailed analysis of the two countries’ food-security challenges and governance
approaches has helped identify three main areas for mutual food-access and food-utilisation
learning - dietary diversity and micronutrient intake, maternal and infant nutrition, and
sanitation. The WHO data presented earlier showed that both countries still suffer from high
rates of child undernourishment, with India more affected than Ethiopia. This may be partly
due to households lacking access to sufficient calories, particularly in Ethiopia where the
population’s prevalence of undernourishment is twice as high as in India.
The countries’ main food-security programmes - India’s PDS and Ethiopia’s PSNP –
had been set up chiefly to address this issue (food access)35 and both have been at least
partially successful. PDS has been found to have a small positive impact on recipients’
caloric intake.36 The effects estimated are larger in studies conducted after 2009, when PDS
was expanded in several Indian states and became better targeted – reducing national grain-
diversion rates from 54% in 2003-2005 to 44% in 2014-2015.37 Preliminary evidence on the
impact of the recently-enacted NFSA suggests both a further reduction in PDS diversion rates
and significant expansion of coverage, from 15% to 74% of the population.38 It is thus
reasonable to expect that PDS may further boost Indian population’s food access in the near
future, even if – given the limit of 5 kg of grain-purchase per person per month – only
modestly. One worrisome issue in this otherwise mostly positive trend is the increasing tying
of PDS benefits to people’s biometric identification numbers (aadhaar), which has
exacerbated exclusion rates amongst the most vulnerable.39 On the other hand, the NFSA has
legally turned PDS from a mechanism for welfare provision into a guarantor of people’s
justiciable right to food, which has become reflected to some extent in PDS beneficiaries’
perception of the programme.40
Ethiopia’s PSNP has also been found to improve beneficiaries’ food access, by
reducing households’ annual number of food-insufficient months by 1.05 (1.53 amongst
households receiving also productive services).41 PSNP’s food allowance (or its cash
equivalent) is larger in amount than PDS’s, granting beneficiaries 15 kg of cereals and 4 kg
of pulses per person per month and unlike PDS, PSNP is relatively well-targeted, particularly
in Ethiopia’s highland areas.42 However, it presently covers only 10% Ethiopians and even
9
though it has been found to have had significant positive income effects on non-recipients as
well, through spill-overs,43 due to its small coverage compared to PDS it is unlikely to have a
larger positive effect on food access nationally.
Dietary diversity and micronutrient deficiency
Nevertheless, India’s high child-undernourishment rates are increasingly seen as a
matter of faulty food utilisation rather than deficient food access.44 One key cause is the
population’s generally unbalanced cereal-heavy diet low in micronutrients, as suggested also
by the high prevalence of anaemia and Vitamin A deficiency (Table 2). PDS, focused on
selling cheap wheat and rice, increased, according to some studies, consumption of the
subsidised cereals but had either no effect on dietary diversity45 (the variety of food groups
consumed) or actually reduced the consumption of nutritionally superior coarse cereals.46
That may be one of the reasons why PDS has failed to lower children’s underweight rates
amongst participating households.47 ICDS and MDMS have been more successful in
improving recipient children’s daily nutrient intake and anthropometric outcomes48 but both
programmes have suffered from poor coverage and corruption49 and their national-level
impact has hence been limited.
Albeit lower than India’s, nutritional deficiencies in Ethiopia are also high. Results
vis-à-vis PSNP’s nutritional effects are inconclusive – one study50 found children in recipient
households to have improved height-for-age scores but IFPRI-led impact evaluation
discovered no significant effect on children’s anthropometric scores or dietary diversity.51
However, PSNP transfers of cash as opposed to food have been associated with a
significantly higher consumption of oils and Vitamin-A-rich foods.52 There is a danger when
transferring cash rather than food of exposing the vulnerable to negative effects of inflation,
as experienced by some PSNP cash recipients during the 2008 food-price spikes.53
Consequently, the majority of PSNP households prefer not to receive only cash.54
Nonetheless, a combination of food and cash receipts may in view of the evidence be more
beneficial to increasing the diversity of food-group and micronutrient intake than solely
cereal transfers, as done by PDS.
India’s higher than Ethiopia’s child undernourishment and micronutrient-deficiency
rates could be related to differences in the countries’ staple diets. Whilst both Indian and
Ethiopian staples include cereals, legumes, and onions, the staple grain in most parts of
Ethiopia – teff – has higher iron content55 than both wheat and rice, Indian staple grains,
although not by as much as thought previously. PSNP’s inclusion of pulses, also rich in iron
10
as well as in protein, likely contributes to a more balanced diet amongst PSNP food recipients
as well, however. The need to improve Indian diets has been increasingly acknowledged also
by the Indian government, with various policy strategies – ranging from micronutrient-
fortification of PDS cereals through diversification of PDS-sold foods to promoting
consumption of nutritionally-superior coarse cereals – currently debated.56
Maternal and infant nutrition
For children’s as well as adults’ good nutritional outcomes, the most crucial are the
first 1000 days of life, from conception through time in the womb to the second birthday.57
There are two aspects of the countries’ relevant policies worth discussing here. The first
relates to pregnancy. Table 2 showed that more than 50% pregnant Indian women are
anaemic, as compared to 23% pregnant Ethiopian women. Studies have also reported many
pregnant Indian women suffering heavy workloads and reducing food intake in hopes of an
easier delivery. All these issues may compromise foetal nourishment.58 In order to ease the
burden of India’s pregnant women, the NFSA decreed that they should receive a stipend of
6,000 IRS. This recommendation was implemented in 2017 under the Pradhan Mantri Matru
Vandana Yojana policy; however, it reduced the amount awarded to 5,000 IRS and is only
given for the first live-born child, excluding 57% annual births.59 Even when the money is
received, the bulk of it is often used to cover the costs of hospital delivery.60 In contrast,
Ethiopian PSNP provides direct cash or food support (without the need to participate in
public works) to women from the fourth month of pregnancy until the child completes the
first year of life.61 Evaluations concluded that PSNP’s pregnancy-support component is
relatively well-implemented.62
Despite higher rates of anaemia amongst Indian than Ethiopian pregnant women, the
percentage of ‘very small’ Indian babies (18.2%)63 is only slightly higher than of Ethiopian
ones (16%).64 Nevertheless, this small difference in underweight rates becomes larger as the
babies grow (Figure 2). One reason may be the difference in the two countries’ weaning
trends. Figure 4 reveals that contrary to the recommendation to start feeding babies
(semi)solids after completing six months of age,65 52% mothers of 6-8-month-old and almost
30% mothers of 9-11-month-old babies in India feed their children only liquids. The
comparative proportions in Ethiopia, although still high, are significantly lower - 39% and
16%.
In order to improve child-feeding practices – and in response to IFPRI’s finding that
PSNP III had no impact on children’s nutritional outcomes - PSNP IV enlarged the
11
programme’s nutritional component, with pregnant and lactating PSNP recipients now
expected to attend nutritional classes (e.g. community health talks, cooking demonstrations).
For other PSNP beneficiaries, attendance of these classes counts towards their public-work
allotment and, in an effort to transform traditional gender roles, male attendance is
encouraged.66 Impact evaluation of a pilot nutritional intervention in Eastern Ethiopia found a
significant positive impact on child-feeding practices.67 India has provided health and
nutritional education to pregnant women and mothers of young children through ICDS for
decades; however, this programme component has been less utilised than ICDS’s provision
of food rations, particularly so in poorer states (e.g. only 13-17% of eligible women received
such education in Uttar Pradesh and 16-18% in Rajasthan),68 and has generally been seen as
ineffective.69
Sanitation
In addition to unbalanced diets, children’s undernourishment rates across the world
have been increasingly linked to sanitation issues.70 For example, inter-district differences in
open-defecation rates in India were found to explain up to 55% variation in their child-
undernourishment rates.71 India has implemented a series of nation-wide programmes to
eradicate the practice, the Swachh Bharat (Clean India) mission the most recent one, but they
have not been widely successful, managing to reduce open-defecation rates only from 70% to
46% between 1990 and 2015.72 The reduction in Ethiopia in the same timeframe has been
considerably greater, from 90% to 32%.73 The suspected rationale for Ethiopia’s greater
success in this regard has been treatment of the issue as a public-health problem and focusing
primarily on the provision of hygiene and sanitation education to people, urging them to build
their own toilets. In contrast, successive Indian governments built millions of toilets;
however, without sufficient community engagement and education Indians, also for cultural
reasons related to the caste system, have been reluctant to use them.74 The ongoing Swachh
Bharat campaign that aims to eradicate open defecation in India by October 2019 – Mahatma
Gandhi’s 150th birthday – appears to suffer from similar problems as previous ones, as it has
under time pressure resorted to using coercive methods without persuading communities that
using toilets was healthier than defecating in the open and may have thus aroused resentment
against the externally-imposed toilets.75
Comparing food-availability and food-stability governance
12
Turning to a brief comparison of India’s and Ethiopia’s food-availability and food-
stability governance, particularly vis-à-vis its effect on individual and household food-
security outcomes, both countries’ national food policies had been shaped by their experience
of famines. In response to the 1943 Bengali famine, followed by three decades of food
shortages, India began pursuing a policy of national grain self-sufficiency.76 It achieved this
goal by mid-1990s, thanks to the widespread adoption of ‘Green-Revolution’ higher-yielding
crops, agricultural subsidies (for fertiliser, electricity for irrigation etc.), and PDS’s guarantee
of minimum support prices to farmers.77 Although in theory PDS could have contributed to
households’ better food-security outcomes through this procurement arm as well, by boosting
small farmers’ incomes, due to high land concentration, unsuccessful land reforms78, and
grain purchases predominantly from large farmers in Punjab and Haryana the programme
strengthened Indian rural agricultural elites instead.79
The increased food production allowed India to amass large stores of grain as well as
become a major international exporter of rice, wheat, and buffalo.80 However, in line with the
‘India first’ national food policy, these exports have been periodically restricted during
international price spikes.81 Whilst export restrictions may have helped keep domestic grain
prices lower in the short run, in addition to impairing food security in net-importing countries
by increasing international prices82 they reduced domestic market integration83 and may have
undermined domestic food production in the longer term.84 Furthermore, much of the food
stored is annually wasted or pilfered – estimated 1.1 million tonnes of cereals between 2010
and 201385 – and despite the 2010 Supreme Court decree for excess grain to be given away
for free, state governments routinely ignore the request.86 The storage system has not
addressed well food instability either as in years with high food-price inflation it failed to
release enough grains to meaningfully reduce prices.87
Ethiopia changed its food-policy strategy in early 2000s, also in an effort to break the
cycle of recurrent food crises and reliance on foreign food aid, which constituted for the
country a source of ‘national humiliation and shame’.88 It succeeded in increasing national
food production (see Figure 3) over the past two decades thanks to a successful land-
certification and tenure reform,89 growing adoption of modern seed varieties, and farmer-
support policies including fertiliser subsidies and agricultural extension services.90 It has not
engaged in intensive international food trade like India thus far, both due to its significantly
lower domestic food production relative to domestic demand and its staple crops’ (teff,
sorghum…) ‘thin’ international markets, although its exports of white maize to neighbouring
countries are rising.91 Wider adoption of modern seed varieties and of irrigation and fertiliser
13
use will likely help increase food production further.92 However, in India these trends have
had numerous negative effects on agricultural soils, including increase in erosion,
waterlogging, and salinity, as well as on groundwater tables, which have become in many
places almost depleted.93 Ethiopia would thus do well to be more environmentally aware in its
efforts to augment food production.
There are indications that Ethiopia’s small farmers benefited from the country’s
agricultural-intensification policies thus far more than India’s – the tenure reform has been
explicitly linked with food-security improvements94 and much of PSNP food rations are
annually purchased from small farmers (and their cooperatives), which in Ethiopia is
estimated to be cheaper than buying from large producers.95 In addition, the operation of
Ethiopia’s government agency tasked with food-price stabilisation, unlike India’s, has been
deemed quite successful.96 Nevertheless, unlike India’s food-based PDS, PSNP has from the
beginning intended to be a ‘cash-first programme’ and even though it still distributes food as
well, its increasing shift towards cash could, without appropriate safeguards, disincentivise
Ethiopia’s domestic food production and by extension harm some small farmers’
livelihoods.97 What indisputably has such a disincentive effect already, acknowledged also by
the Development Assistance Committee,98 is that one-third of current PSNP food transfers is
shipped from the United States in kind.99
Cross-country lessons
The brief comparison of India’s and Ethiopia’s key food-security challenges and their
ways of addressing them has highlighted several possible areas for mutual policy lessons. The
first one relates to the decision whether to award food-security support in food or cash, with
India’s main food-security programme, PDS, still disbursing only food and Ethiopia’s PSNP
aiming to switch fully to cash. The two countries’ experience suggests that transferring a
mixture of both may be the most effective option as cash provisions might jeopardise
households’ food security during food-price hikes100 but simultaneously improve households’
dietary diversity more than food transfers.101 That most PSNP beneficiaries prefer to receive a
mixture of food and cash102 supports this mixed-transfer proposition.
Maintaining the mixed character (food and cash) of PSNP transfers would also align
with Ethiopia’s ongoing effort to increase domestic food production, an area where India has
thus far outperformed Ethiopia. An integral part of this endeavour should be persuading the
US to cease its in-kind development aid to Ethiopia, as it has done vis-à-vis other countries,
including India, and for which Ethiopia - as demonstrated in donor negotiations regarding
14
other matters - possesses sufficient political capital.103 However, in order to maximise the
positive effects of national food production on household food security in both countries,
PSNP should continue and PDS augment the purchase of state food transfers from small
farmers. PDS’s announced move away from selling mostly wheat and rice in favour of millet
(a coarse cereal), which requires less irrigation and hence can be grown cheaply also by small
farmers, may thus be a step in the right direction for India.104 Rising white-maize exports by
Ethiopian smallholder cooperatives demonstrate that encouraging smallholders’ food
production does not necessarily equate to lowering countries’ ability to engage in
international food trade either.105 What could harm this ability for both countries, however,
would be continued export-restriction of crops experiencing rising international prices, which
not only impairs food security in crop-importing countries but also reduces future trade
opportunities and crop production in the restriction-imposing countries.106
Another crucial area to improving food-security outcomes in both countries is
sanitation. Ethiopia has been praised internationally for rapidly reducing open-defecation
rates in recent decades; however, high rates have thus far persisted in lowland regions
(Somali, Afar) and many newly-built toilets are unimproved latrines less effective in reducing
bacterial infections – and thus improving food security – than improved latrines.107 New
latrines have also sprung up in millions across India in the last couple of years, as part of a
campaign to eradicate open defecation by October 2019 that the government has declared a
great success. Nevertheless, not only some of the new latrines may not be fully effective at
reducing bacterial diseases, many new owners refuse to use them.108 Coffey and Spears argue
that one of the key reasons is India’s caste system, which has traditionally reserved sanitation
work for the lowest ‘untouchable’ caste. Many people from other castes are consequently
unwilling to clean or empty latrines and pre-emptively do not to use them.109 Extensive work
with Indian (as well as lowland Ethiopian) communities to realise the health dangers of open
defecation is seen as the most effective potential remedy but has largely been ignored even by
the latest Indian sanitation campaign, which in 2015-2016 allocated to community work only
1% of the total budget.110
Yet another important area for action concerns nutrition of particularly pregnant
women and young children. Fewer pregnant women in Ethiopia are anaemic than in India and
Ethiopia has also experienced a faster rate of improvement in this regard. The immediate
cause of this discrepancy could lie in better nutrition and sanitation of Ethiopian women but
these elements would likely improve for pregnant Indian women if they received greater
support from the government. Pregnant PSNP beneficiaries in Ethiopia are entitled to
15
unconditional cash/food transfers from their fourth month of pregnancy until the child’s first
birthday. Meanwhile, only Indian women pregnant with their first child are entitled to any
financial support and the amount has been reported to be mostly spent on payments to
doctors/nurses at delivery. Whilst cultural elements may also be at play here,111 the lack of
public financial support leaves millions of poor Indian women with no choice but to work
throughout pregnancy and right after delivery, compromising the nutritional status of their
new-borns. To help address this issue, the Indian government should at least consider
providing the maternity benefit to all pregnant women, as recommended by the NFSA.
The nutrition of many Indian and Ethiopian infants is further imperilled through
inadequate feeding practices. Whilst breastfeeding rates are high in both countries (94%+
breastfeeding rates of 6-8 month-olds), a large proportion of 6-23 month-old children
particularly in India receives no (semi)solid foods despite the inability of milk112 to fully meet
their nutritional needs. Once weaned, only 7% Ethiopian and 9% Indian children consume a
WHO-defined ‘minimum acceptable diet’.113 These issues should be addressed through a
combination of better nutritional awareness and easier access to food groups other than
cereals. Both countries could consider including vegetables and fruits in PDS/PSNP rations
and India also pulses, as Ethiopia started in the latest version of PSNP and with which some
states in India (e.g. Chhattisgarh) have already had some success.114 Nutritional education,
recently strengthened in Ethiopia’s PSNP, should be improved in India as well, possibly by
regulating the employment status of AWC workers currently charged with the task but
severely underpaid.115
Several other potential food-security lessons between the two countries are
constrained by their distinct political-economic situations, only alluded to thus far. Whilst the
depiction of PDS in India’s NFSA as a guarantor of ‘rights’ rather than handouts has
emboldened some Indians to appeal when denied PDS coverage or service,116 Ethiopia in
2013 cracked down on the use of the word ‘rights’ by NGOs.117 It would thus be unrealistic to
recommend that Ethiopia adopts rights-based language regarding food security, however
beneficial that could be. Similarly, PSNP’s success in targeting and relative lack of
corruption (as well as Ethiopia’s successful prevention of famine following the 2015-2016
drought) have been attributed to the strong pro-food-security will of the EPRDF-led
authoritarian Ethiopian government.118 Even if India’s national government matched such
will, however, India’s (more) democratic governance process is by default more protracted
and more open to transformation by other national actors than Ethiopia’s.
16
Finally, because Ethiopia, unlike India, obtains most funds for its food-security
programmes from foreign development agencies and its national income is significantly
lower than India’s, recommending that Ethiopia significantly expands PSNP’s coverage as
India had recently done with PDS may not be realistic either (at least presently), even if it
could substantially help further reduce Ethiopia’s food insecurity. Thanks to PSNP’s largely
foreign funding, Ethiopia has been additionally obliged to allow foreign donors close
oversight of and feedback on PSNP’s functioning. Nonetheless, both Ethiopian and
international contacts interviewed for this article opined that the joint government-donor
discussions of PSNP and inbuilt impact evaluations of its different initiatives were actually
beneficial, ensuring that the programme learned from its mistakes and continuously
improved.119 Good-quality evaluations of India’s key food-security programmes are abundant
as well (albeit less systematic than Ethiopia’s) but India’s food-security governance would
undoubtedly improve if the link between their findings and the policies enacted were also
strengthened.
Conclusion
Inspired by India’s and Ethiopia’s similar food-security issues along with the reality that
despite significantly higher per-capita incomes India has performed worse in some food-
security measures (e.g. child underweight and wasting rates) than Ethiopia, this article has
compared the two countries’ approaches to food-security governance and identified several
key areas for potential cross-country learning, including dietary diversity, sanitation, and
maternal and infant nutrition, as well as food production and programme’s external
oversight.120 Whilst naturally most applicable to the Indian and Ethiopian contexts, these
findings are useful also beyond as many countries in the Global South continue to struggle
with similar food-security challenges.
17
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Table 1. Basic economic and social indicators in 2016Ethiopia India
PPPpc (2014 USD) 1523 5730GDP growth (%, 1997-2016) 7.9 7.0Gini index 33.6 33.9Population (mill) 99.3 1311.0Population growth (%) 2.5 1.2Rural population (% total) 80.5 67.3Agriculture (% employed) 72.7 51.1
Staple grains teff, wheat, white maize, sorghum
wheat, rice
Political regime authoritarian democraticSource: WDI, 2018
22
Table 2. Key food-utilisation indicators in 2015/16Ethiopia India
Protein in diet (g/caput/day) 61.0 59.0Anaemia amongst pregnant women (%) 23.0 53.6Anaemia amongst children <5 years old (%) 57.0 58.5Vitamin A deficiency (%) 51.0 62.0Access to improved water (%) 61.6 94.1Open defecation practice (%) 32.0 46.0Source: FAOSTAT
23
Figure 1. Comparison of undernourishment prevalence in Ethiopia and India
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%20
00
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
Prevalence of undernourishment
Ethiopia
India
Source: FAOSTAT
24
Figure 2. Comparison of children’s undernourishment rates in Ethiopia and India
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
2000 2005 2010 2015
Children's undernourishment rates
Wasting Ethiopia
Wasting India
Stunting Ethiopia
Stunting India
Underweight Ethiopia
Underweight India
Source: FAOSTAT
25
Figure 3. Comparison of Ethiopia’s and India’s food-availability and food-stability indicators
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
120%19
9519
9619
9719
9819
9920
0020
0120
0220
0320
0420
0520
0620
0720
0820
0920
1020
1120
1220
1320
1420
15
Average dietary energy supply adequacy
Ethiopia India
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
Net per-capita food-production index
Ethiopia India
-2E+09
0
2E+09
4E+09
6E+09
8E+09
1E+10
1.2E+10
1.4E+10
1.6E+10
1.8E+10
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
Food trade balance (current USD)
Ethiopia India
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Per-capita food supply variability (kCal/day)
Ethiopia India
Source: FAOSTAT
26
Figure 4. Comparison of child-weaning trends in Ethiopia and India
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
0-1 months old 2-3 months old 4-5 months old 6-8 months old 9-11 months old 12-17 months old 18-23 months old
Feeding and weaning trends of children under 2 years old
India - not breastfeeding India - breastfeeding (incl. supplemented with liquids only)
India - breastfeeding and supplemented with (semi) solids Ethiopia - not breastfeeding
Ethiopia - breastfeeding (incl. supplemented with liquids only) Ethiopia - breastfeeding and supplemented with (semi) solids
Source: http://rchiips.org/NFHS/NFHS-4Reports/India.pdf, https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR328/FR328.
27
1 Notes
http://rchiips.org/nfhs/factsheet_NFHS-4.shtml2 https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR328/FR328.pdf3 Ramalingaswami et al., “Malnutrition: A South Asian Enigma.” The term is disputed as discussed later in the
article.4 http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y4671e/y4671e06.htm5 WFP, Food Security Assessment Handbook, 23.6 Riely et al., Food Security Indicators.7 WFP, Food Security Assessment Handbook, 23.8 Petrikova, Global Food Security, 7-10.9 http://www.ifs.du.edu/ifs/frm_CountryProfile.aspx?Country=ET10 Feyissa, “Aid Negotiation”, 790.11 http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/ess-fs/ess-fadata/en/#.WYLMkceGPDc12 E.g. Svedberg, Poverty and Undernutrition.13 http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/ess-fs/ess-fadata/en/#.WYLMkceGPDc14 Usually caused by iron-poor diet and linked to higher morbidity and mortality.15 E.g. Spears et al., “Open Defecation.”16 http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/ess-fs/ess-fadata/en/#.WYLMkceGPDc17 Simultaneously, even dramatic reductions in national or regional food availability do not have to trigger famines
(Ravallion). Devereux demonstrates how drought-driven reductions in food stocks in Ethiopia led to famines in 1984
and 2001 but not in 2015-16, when the government’s timely intervention (along with PSNP infrastructure in place)
helped avoid famine.18 Ramalingaswami et al., “Malnutrition: A South Asian Enigma.”19 WHO, “Appropriate Body Mass Index for Asian Populations.” See also Yajnik, “Neonatal Anthropometry” and
Hruschka and Headly, “Universal Anthropometric Standards Bias.” 20 Nutrition Foundation of India, “Growth Performance of Affluent Indian Children;” Bhandari et al., “Growth
Performance of Affluent Indian children.” Nubé showed black children to suffer from significantly higher
undernourishment rates than Indian children in South Africa. 21 Heady et al., “The Other Asian Enigma.”22 Mooij, “Food Policy and Politics.”23 In order to prove one’s status as BPL or AAY, Indians need to obtain a relevant PDS ration card. 24 http://dfpd.nic.in/25 http://indiacode.nic.in/acts-in-pdf/202013.pdf26 Puri, “NFSA: Early Experiences,” 10.27 Lokshin et al., “Improving Child Nutrition?”28 http://dfpd.nic.in/nfsa-act.htm29 Singh et al., “School Meals”. 30 http://dfpd.nic.in/nfsa-act.htm31 Berhane et al., “Ethiopia’s Food Security Program.”
32 Ministry of Agriculture, Productive Safety Net Programme. All regions except for Benishangul-Gumuz and
Gambela, where the government operates separate food-security programmes, are covered.33 Ministry of Agriculture, Productive Safety Net Programme, 21.34 Zenebe et al., “School Feeding Program”.35 Mooij, “Food Policy and Politics;” Berhane et al., “Ethiopia’s Food Security Program.”36 Narayanan and Gerber. “Social Safety Nets”, 70.37 Khera, “Diversion of Grain,” 108-9.38 Puri, “NFSA: Early Experiences.”39 E.g. Drèze et al., “Aadhaar and Food Security.”40 Pillay, “Economic and Social-Rights Adjudication.”41 Berhane et al., “Impact of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Nets.”42 Berhane et al., “Ethiopia’s Food Security Program.”43 Filipski et al., “General Equilibrium Impact Assessment.”44 Desai and Vanneman, “Enhancing Nutrition Security.”45 Ibid.46 Khera, “India’s Public Distribution System.” 47 Desai and Vanneman, “Enhancing Nutrition Security.”48 Ibid.; Afridi, “Child Welfare Programs.”49 Afoweso and Rammohan, “Integrated Child Development Services;” Sharma, “Mid-Day Meal Scheme.”50 Porter and Goyal, “Social Protection for All Ages?”51 Berhane et al., “PSNP in Ethiopia.”52 Baye et al., “Effects of conditional food and cash transfers.” Also higher, though not significantly, consumption of
dairy, legumes, and other vegetables.53 Devereux, “Social Protection.”54 Baye et al., “Effects of conditional food and cash transfers.”55 Baye, “Teff,” 4-5. A key factor in anaemia is iron deficiency. 56 Pingali et al., “From Food to Nutrition Security.”57 https://www.unicef.org/southafrica/SAF_brief_1000days.pdf58 Nubé, “Asian Enigma,” 513.59 https://thewire.in/government/2-6-crore-live-births-a-year-and-modis-maternity-scheme-reached-less-than-a-lakh-
women-in-201760 Sinha et al., “Realising Universal Maternity Benefits.”61 Ministry of Agriculture, Productive Safety Net Programme.62http://siteresources.worldbank.org/SAFETYNETSANDTRANSFERS/Resources/
EthiopiaPSNPLessonsLearnedLite.pdf63 In India, ‘very small’ babies refer to those weighing below 2.5kgs, in Ethiopia to subjectively ‘very small’ babies as
only 14% babies were weighed after birth. 64http://rchiips.org/NFHS/NFHS-4Reports/India.pdf; https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR328/FR328.pdf65 https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR328/FR328.pdf, 192.66 https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/un-new-york/42354/pnsp-4-overview-nutrition-sensitive-interventions_en
67 Kang et al., “Effects of nutrition promotion.”68 http://rchiips.org/NFHS/NFHS-4Reports/India.pdf69 Pingali et al., “From Food to Nutrition Security,” 79.70 Spears, “International Variation in Child Height.”71 Spears et al., “Open Defecation.”72 http://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/ethiopia-pushes-hygiene-5746373 Ibid.74 Coffey and Spears, Where India Goes.75 http://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/editorials/2018/may/05/a-blot-on-swachh-bharat-1810394.html76 http://oii.igidr.ac.in:8080/jspui/bitstream/2275/179/1/PP-056.pdf77 Frankel, India’s Green Revolution. 78 Jha, “Land Reforms in India.”79 Pingali et al., “From Food to Nutrition Security,” 77.80 https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/india-s-agricultural-exports-climb-record-high81 Baylis et al., “Effects of Export Restrictions.”82https://www.ictsd.org/sites/default/files/research/Agricultural%20Export%20Restrictions,%20Food%20Security
%20and%20the%20WTO.pdf83 Baylis et al., “Effects of Export Restrictions.”84 Clarkson and Kularni, “Effects of India’s Trade Policy”; Fellmann et al., “Temporary Export Restrictions.”85 https://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi-news/rice-wheat-worth-rs-2-050-crore-wasted-in-3-yrs-in-govt-godowns/
story-knsmp10kbAGSnWfpXUI7yI.html86 http://www.businessinsider.com/india-malnutrition-a-story-of-rotting-crops-and-rotten-bureaucracy-2012-7?IR=T87 Basu, “India’s Foodgrain Policy.” Baylis et al. found export restrictions to further exacerbate food instability.88 Lavers, “Social Protection”, 6.89 https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2478729/CLTS_WP2_2013.pdf?sequence=190 Spielman et al., “Cereal Intensification in Ethiopia.”91 http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ivc/Ethiopia_P4P_case_study.pdf92 http://www.danangtimes.vn/Portals/0/Docs/210145221-Brief_KOtsuka%20_rev_.pdf93 Bhattacharya et al., “Soil Degradation in India.”94 https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2478729/CLTS_WP2_2013.pdf?sequence=195 http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ivc/Ethiopia_P4P_case_study.pdf, vii. 96 https://www.iatp.org/files/2012_07_13_IATP_GrainReservesReader.pdf#page=5197 Ibid. 98 Interview in Addis Ababa.99 https://www.usaid.gov/ethiopia/food-assistance. Bulk of US ‘development aid’ to Ethiopia is provided in
(American) food. 100 Devereux, “Social Protection.”101 Baye et al., “Effects of conditional food and cash transfers.”102 Ibid.103 Feyissa, “Aid Negotiation.”
104 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/govt-to-distribute-millets-like-bajra-via-pds/
articleshow/63786531.cms; millet is also nutritionally superior to wheat and rice.105 http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ivc/Ethiopia_P4P_case_study.pdf106 Woldie and Siddig, “Impact of Banning Exports.”107 https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/ethiopia-pushes-hygiene-57463108 https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/toilets-are-being-constructed-at-a-remarkable-pace-but-its-
not-a-prem-katha-yet-for-all-sections-of-the-population/109 Coffey and Spears, Where India Goes.110 Ibid., 221.111 Ramalingaswami et al. argue that pregnant women in South Asia are less cared for by their families than in sub-
Saharan Africa.112 Possibly supplemented with water, juice, and/or broth. 113 http://rchiips.org/NFHS/NFHS-4Reports/India.pdf; https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR328/FR328.pdf114 Pingali et al., “From Food to Nutrition Security,” 80.115 E.g. https://thewire.in/government/lack-basic-facilities-underpaid-overworked-workers-plague-rajasthans-
anganwadis116 Interview in Delhi.117 Berhane et al., “Ethiopia’s Food Security Program.”118 Lavers, “Social Protection.”119 Interviews in Addis Ababa. See also Berhane et al. PSNP in Ethiopia, 62.120 Important caveat: many of the two countries’ food-security programmes and policies have been recently modified
and not yet impact-evaluated and thus they are compared on the basis of their potential rather than established effects.
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